Critic Reviews

A fabulously enjoyable documentary from Martin Scorsese that may introduce a new generation to this incredibly sharp, often stinging, but famously unproductive writer. [22 Nov 2010, p.12B]

The quick-witted malcontent, a Morristown, New Jersey, refugee who arrived at Port Authority in 1969, is the best kind of New Yorker: one with a long memory who's averse to nostalgia.

In “Public Speaking,” Martin Scorsese’s enormously enjoyable and perceptive documentary about her, Ms. Lebowitz’s endearing narcissism is a study in the notion that arrogance and insecurity are largely two sides of the same cocktail coaster.

By the end of this funny, insightful doc, you get a sense of an extraordinary mind that both fueled and fed the zeitgeist. Don't miss it.

This is a movie with a lot of intelligence and ideas, about someone with a lot of both, for people who, even if they lack one or both of those qualities, appreciate them.

The film makes a choice: it ignores the psychic wounds that created the witty and prickly bow in which Lebowitz wraps herself. But this approach feels exactly right, and with Public Speaking Martin Scorsese has created a fine film that may be as close as her fans will get to the book Fran Lebowitz seems unable to write.

Even if her writers block continues for another three decades, Lebowitz herself remains undeniably fascinating. Scorsese's documentary offers us a long overdue taste of her unique, queasily accurate perspectives on our culture -- always right, never fair and never disappointing.

This may not be Martin Scorsese's most sophisticated film, but it actually takes a smart filmmaker to understand that, with a subject like Fran Lebowitz, the best thing you can do is let her talk.

If you’re a longtime fan of the truly iconoclastic essayist...expecting to learn what makes her tick then Public Speaking, Martin Scorsese’s loving profile of the early bloomer who subsequently spent a decade with “writer’s blockade,” is certain to disappoint.

Without any framing background information, this affectionate documentary and its continual monologues can feel a little too insidery and indulgent. [22 Nov 2010, p.G9]